From Participation to Presence—What Young People Have to Say About Family Group Conferences

Family Group Conferences (FGCs) is a model for promoting child welfare created to help families in managing concerns related to at-risk children, while respecting cultural contexts, and does so by integrally involving them and their families in solution creation and implementation. This study examines the experiences of 18 at-risk youths in Israel's FGC pilot programme and is part of a larger scale study of the Israeli FGC pilot programme. Thematic analysis identified six key themes related to the perceived success of the conference. The first three—receiving pre-conference information, FGC structure and setting, and perceived support, underscore the importance of implementing the FGC model effectively. The remaining three themes—participants' and their families' characteristics, perceived consequences of participation, and family dynamics, focus on the young people involved. This study emphasizes the importance of both participation and presence among young people, and their equal significance in fostering the undertaking of active roles in FGC. This study found that execution matters, as does calibrating the FGC to the unique characteristics of the at-risk young people and their family in order to promote their participation and presence. This research uniquely amplifies young peoples' voices in FGC in Israel and underscores the necessity of considering both participation and presence in programme design for at-risk youth.